


Bruised

by Stelia22



Category: Smosh
Genre: Angst, Bruises, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 01:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9943328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stelia22/pseuds/Stelia22
Summary: “Gets countless bruises and has no idea –”“- where’s Sohinki?”– Matt Raub and Mari Takahashi, 2016. Video: Drunk, Stoned or Stupid (Bonus Vlogs)).Sohinki bruises a lot. A chronicle of these bruises.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted (and still available) on Wattpad on 26 March 2016.

Cover for _**Bruised**_ by Stelia22

_______________________________________

Joven did a double-take. “What the hell happened to you?”

Sohinki was confused until he looked at where Joven was pointing at. A bruise was blooming on his skin.

Shit.

_______________________________________

“No – don’t use that.” Sohinki tried to subtly shuffle away from Joven.

“Why not?” Joven asked lightly, shoving the bag of frozen peas against the bruise.

“Because it’s unhygienic!”

“It’s against your leg, Ma- Sohinki,” Joven quickly corrected himself.

Sohinki was too busy fretting about the hygiene – or lack of it – to notice, but he let Joven hold the peas against his leg anyway.

_______________________________________

“Sohinki, you have a bruise on your leg,” Joven said, pointing to the blue patch blooming on his skin.

Sohinki looked down and swore under his breath.

“Hang on, I’ll get you an ice pack.”

“No -”

Joven had already run off. Moments later he rushed back in with an ice pack. He held it out for Sohinki to take, though he seemed to be halfway between giving it to him and applying it to Sohinki himself.

Sohinki quickly snatched it away from him. He put it against his bruise. Minutes passed in silence.

Joven still hadn’t left.

“Thanks, I guess,” Sohinki muttered quietly, almost under his breath.

_______________________________________

“What the hell is that?” Sohinki exclaimed in horror, seeing the kind of “ice pack” that Joven eagerly shoved in his face.

“It’s a gel pack!” Joven exclaimed excitedly, big grin on his face.

“You know this shit leaks, right?”

“What? Really? Surely they don’t. They’re like any ice pack.”

“No, fuck you. Get me another one.”

“No, fuck you! At least give it a go.”

“Do we have any other ones?”

“Nope.”

“I’m not taking it then.”

“I don’t want you to have, well, nothing.”

“It’s better than _that_ thing.” Sohinki pointed at the (pink!) gel pack accusingly.

“Aw, just try it.”

“I have tried it! When I was a kid my mom bought me one of those stupid gel packs. One day it just broke for no reason and the gel started leaking everywhere.”

“Well this one’s brand new,” Joven insisted, shoving the gel pack onto Sohinki’s bruise anyway.

Sohinki sighed, grabbing the pack and holding it against his bruise. He glared at Joven until he went away before turning back to his computer. As much as he hated gel packs, he would not let Joven hold it for him. No way. And maybe this time it wouldn’t end up leaking…

About twenty minutes in the plastic got a hole in it. Gel started leaking out of it.

Sohinki swore as gel ran down his leg. “See, I told you that shit leaked!”

Joven looked up from his desk. “Really?”

“Yes! Can’t you see it running down my leg you piece of shit!” Sohinki yelled, swivelling around in his chair and pointing down at his leg.

“I – well, maybe you pressed too hard?” Joven spluttered. He grabbed some paper towel and handed it to him.

Sohinki glowered at him but took it anyway, quickly dabbing at his leg. “No I didn’t! I barely pressed at all!” He picked up the gel pack and tossed it at Joven angrily.

Joven yelped as the pink gel pack flew at him. He just managed to catch it before it fell onto the floor.

Sohinki was still glaring at him as he dabbed at the gel on his own leg.

Joven gaped at him. “I wanted to try something new! I thought these would work alright!” Joven exclaimed defensively.

“But I told you they were shit!”

“You still used it anyway!”

“Because you shoved it on my leg!”

“You held it there!”

“Because you only went away when I kept holding there. If I had taken it off you would have shoved it back on anyway!”

Silence.

“Just get that stupid thing away from me,” Sohinki said wearily.

“Alright, alright,” Joven sighed. “I won’t get you gel packs,” he said, walking out of the room, gel pack in hand, so that he could throw it out.

_______________________________________

Joven took one look at Sohinki and ran out of the room.

“What -?” Sohinki spluttered. He looked down and – oh, there was a bruise. How did that happen, again?

CRASH.

Sohinki chuckled as Joven tripped over a whole bunch of stuff that was just lying in the way of the door. Joven let out a string of swear words as he stumbled over to him, legs unsteady as though he were drunk. That just made Sohinki laugh harder.

Joven glared at him and flushed. “Shut up,” he growled, shoving the “ice pack” at him.

Sohinki raised his eyebrow sceptically. It was literally nothing but ice cubes wrapped in brown paper towel. Joven threw up his hands helplessly. Sohinki rolled his eyes but took the jumbled heap anyway. He placed it over the bruise on his leg.

Minutes passed in silence. Sohinki’s hands became numb from the now-melting ice. Water soaked throw the paper towel so that his hands were dripping wet.

Joven quickly grabbed more of the shitty, flimsy paper towel and shoved it at Sohinki. The water just soaked right through it.

Sohinki chuckled at how flustered Joven was. _Old man Joven_ , he sung in his own head.

Joven kept shoving more and more of that flimsy paper at him, hoping it would do something. Minutes passed; the stack of paper getting bigger and bigger. Every rip of a new sheet from the roll was louder than the last; just a bit more frantic.

It didn’t do anything, of course.

That’s when Joven started to panic. “OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod -”

“Joven -” Sohinki said gently, placing a hand on Joven’s arm. Joven’s eyes widened in panic. “Joven!” he said louder, clutching his arm tighter. Joven froze. “It’s OK,” Sohinki continued. “I’ll deal with it. I -” Sohinki struggled with words to say. Joven’s face was falling now, eyes cast down. “Thank you,” Sohinki finished softly.

Joven breathed heavily. He looked at the bruise and the dripping ice cubes on them.

“God they must be freezing,” Joven said, a shiver coursing through him.

Sohinki shrugged. “It’s fine.”

Joven raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“It’s better than the gel pack.”

“True.”

A few moments passed in silence.

“What if I got you a hot pack?” Joven asked.

“That would burn me up.”

“Yeah, but it would make you hot. Which is, you know, necessary. Because you’re not gonna be as hot as me without it.”

Sohinki snorted.

Joven struck an elaborate pose, biting his lip sexily. “ ’Cos, you know, I’m taller than you, I’m more attractive than you -”

“OK, taller than me, yes. More attractive than me, not a yes. Thinner than me? Definitely not a yes.”

Joven chuckled to himself. “Well in that case, you’re just gonna be a cold polar bear, huh?”

“Well, yeah. I’d rather be too cold than too hot,” Sohinki easily quipped back.

Joven’s face screwed up in confusion. “ _Why?_ ”

“Because you can always put more clothes on.”

“Well, I’m too hot for that shit,” Joven retorted, though it seemed more…strained.

Sohinki rolled his eyes. “You are the most arrogant little shit I have ever met. You seriously have an ego issue.”

“I would have nothing if I didn’t have my ego,” Joven agreed, failing to hide the bit of sadness in his voice.

It wasn’t even an understatement. _If I didn’t have my ego_ , he thought to himself… _I would literally have nothing. I would be no-one._

Not that anyone would ever find that out.

_______________________________________

One day, Sohinki walked up to his desk and saw a boxed gift sitting on his desk. He frowned. Why would someone leave a present for him? It wasn’t his birthday. It wasn’t Hanukkah. It wasn’t any other holiday.

The gift was one of those crappy, over-priced cardboard gift boxes that people got for five dollars at the so-called “discount” store with even worse, tackier painting on the outside. There was a little tag on it, one of those expensive but boring tags. It simply said: _Sohinki_.

He opened the box sceptically. There was note inside, which he took out.

_Sohinki,_

_For all your bruises. ~~(Yes, I did have to rewrite that a lot of times. I’ve never really been concise. And yes, I did have to ask Flitz about that word first.)~~_

Sohinki shook his head. Of course the explanation was longer than the actual message. But why had it been crossed out?

Then he saw how Joven had signed it.

_~~Love~~ ~~Joven~~ Joshua_

Sohinki’s heart leaped in his chest, first at the word “Love” and then at the word “Joshua”. As far as he knew, he was the only one who was allowed to call him that.

But why had he crossed out “Love”?

Maybe Joven loved him? No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t have crossed it out if he did.

Heavy-hearted, Sohinki set aside the note and looked into the box again. His eyes widened. Nestled inside, surrounded by red tissue paper – the colour one would get for Valentine’s Day – was an ice pack of a red panda.

Sohinki slowly took it out of the box. The ice pack was kind of flattish, the plastic clear so that the fluid within it was clearly visible. The surface on the pack had a picture of a red panda printed out onto it. Every little detail, from the fur to the eyes to the tail, were all there, as though stencilled into the surface.

There was square shaped gift tag attached to it with sticky tape in Joven’s messy writing:

_I drew the panda myself._

Bullshit.

_______________________________________

Later that day Sohinki found Joven walking by. He physically shoved himself in front of him, the way that he did when trying to get into a conversation. He held up the red panda ice pack. “You didn’t draw this yourself, did you?” he accused.

“What makes you think that?”

“This is way too good of a drawing. It’s extremely detailed, down to the finest little fur details. You can’t draw for shit, Joven. You made a steak look like a clock when we played Drawful once. There’s no way you drew something like this.”

Joven looked down. “Yeah…I’m shit at drawing.”

Sohinki chuckled nervously, thinking that he was joking around.

“That’s why I looked it up in the first place.”

Joven looked up, slightly alarmed.

“I was like, there’s no way Joven drew something that good so I looked it up on Google Images. And sure enough, one of the very first images was the one you used for that ice pack.”

Joven looked down again. He scuffed his shoes against the floor.

Silence.

Sohinki frowned. “Why are you being so quiet? You’re never this quiet. Usually it’s the other way around. You’re the one talking and rambling like crazy and I’m just the chilled out, more reserved guy who doesn’t say as much.”

Joven’s head hung down further and his shoulders seemed to sag. He quirked his eyebrows in a way that meant, ‘I’m feeling hurt but I’m trying to hide it’.

More silence.

“Maybe I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” Joven mumbled so quietly under his breath that Sohinki had to strain to hear him.

“What?”

Joven sighed. He shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking away.

“Wait!”

Joven gritted his teeth and started walking faster.

“WAIT!” Sohinki shoved himself in front of him and grabbed his arm.

Joven’s eyes widened. He felt paralysed. He felt like a superhero fugitive surrounded by police, guns out, ready to shoot him at any second. “No, don’t, it’s nothing –”

“No it’s not nothing!” Sohinki replied incredulously. “If it was really nothing you wouldn’t give a shit about what I think. Isn’t your whole motto, like, ‘live out loud’ and all that stuff?”

“Well, yeah but this is different.”

“ _How?_ ”

Joven dug his fingernails into his palms. He looked down at the ground again. “Maybe I don’t give a shit normally but then you started getting all these bruises and I started helping you and maybe I fell in love with you but there’s no way you feel the same so maybe I made you an ice pack of a red panda to try and tell you that,” he mumbled all in one breath.

When Sohinki didn’t say anything, Joven sighed heavily. “But there’s no way you feel the same. There’s no way.”

Sohinki gaped at him. He blinked his eyes a few times. He thought back to all the times that Joven had eagerly rushed in with an ice pack or a bag of peas of – that one dreaded time – a gel pack.

Sohinki was so shocked that Joven was able to easily push past him and walk away.

“But -” Sohinki spluttered, turning around. “Joven -”

Joshua was already gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Because even confident people (like Joven) get insecure sometimes.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Leave kudos and comments if you liked it =).
> 
> Note: There is and will be no sequel to this story. The two reasons why there isn't is because:  
> a) If I did it would mitigate the entire point of the story (and its book cover!)  
> b) I don't really know what happens afterwards anyway


End file.
